


Procession

by misslonelyhearts



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/F, Friendship, Loss, Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:59:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misslonelyhearts/pseuds/misslonelyhearts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>sad fic is sad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Procession

“You’re not going.”  


“I have to agree, it’s not safe.”  Anders nods but looks down at the floor instead of at Leandra, suddenly interested in Dog’s paws beside the fire. So, he misses the subtle jerk of her eyebrow.  Thankfully, neither the guard captain nor the dwarf have anything to add.  And, while Aveline kneels to scratch the Mabari’s ears and take his jaws between her hands, Varric steps back into the foyer . . .disengaging from this particular battle.

Leandra’s narrowed eyes drift over Anders and he gives her a pleading look.  It doesn’t make anything better, the way the healer inserts himself between them at every jagged turn.  It was someone else’s job once, a different pair of brown eyes admonishing she and Garrett both.  He doesn’t mean to, but Anders makes it worse every time.

The champion snorts, and plants his fists on a spot just above the cracked edge of his belt.  “Well?  Are we done with this?”

There will be no softer words between them if she pushes.  He’ll only walk away as if it were the same as completing a thought.  It would be simple enough to tell him why the coast has been on her mind.  She might explain how there is every reason to expect that he will not mark the upcoming day with anything greater than the same cloying bouquet, and the same awkward moroseness, as the years before.  Those things aren’t enough for her, never have been, and so it’s easier to make him crazy than to break his heart. 

It’s easier to be the insufferable old woman.

“You go there all the time.  Merchants and sailors and all manner of people go there every day.”  When his chest expands around the breadth of his argument, she slices through it.  “Do you think because you carry _that,_ because you bring _them_ , that I worry any less every time you step through that door?”

She can’t help the combative way she crosses her arms any more than she can stop herself gesturing at the staff, and poor Anders.  The mage nods in his defeated way and sucks at the inside of his cheek.  Garrett looks to him briefly before scrounging up the deepest register of his voice in retort.

“No.  Just. . . ** _no_** , mother.” 

And then he goes. Garrett and the dwarf retreat into deepening shadows beyond the front door without pausing for the rest of their party.  Kirkwall awaits.  While her son seeks out its unique despair, clearly finding it more tolerable than her face and her simple request, Leandra stands gripping her upper arms in silent frustration. 

“Is there something there we can bring you?  Why is it so important?”  Anders is anxious to be out the door himself, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet, but he ducks to look at her, make sure she’s okay.

“No.  I appreciate the offer, but I. . .” She watches Aveline turn Dog over to rub his belly.  The guard captain does not look up.  Anders shifts on his toes again, waiting.  “I’m fine.  It was a silly thing to bother him with.  Go on.”

When she smiles at him, it’s genuine.  He needs it from her, more than her own children, it seems.  She couldn’t refuse that warmth if she wanted to, and she thinks of Garrett’s beard again, its carelessness . . .no, there’s nothing in the world like being _needed_.

Before he goes, Anders squeezes her shoulder.

As the door creaks shut, Aveline rises from the floor and nods as if agreeing with some internal monologue.

“I will take you.”

Leandra smiles again, for the length of a moment, and then shakes her head.  The whole idea of the Wounded Coast becoming a dark, indistinct mass among all the others lumped together under the banner of things she can’t do any longer.  And, she won’t drag Aveline toward it unnecessarily.

“What?  Oh, Av . . .Captain, I couldn’t impose.  You have a greater duty to attend to.  Thank you, though.”

Green eyes don’t dart away from hers, and don’t betray any relief.  Instead, Aveline folds her own arms, and lets silence bring Leandra closer.  When she speaks, finally, it is with a heavy voice, and the two women stare at each other with the snap and sigh of the fire between them.

“The Wounded Coast is not the most dangerous place you and I have ever run across.”  Then, the guard captain gains a little softness around those eyes and Leandra fights the urge to embrace her as she continues.  “We can . . .mark the day together, if you like.”

“Indeed.  I would be grateful.”  It’s all she can say, all she can do to stow the image of the girl with the flaming hair and the black blood smearing her arms to the elbows.  For the captain, it must be no worse than hushing the sound of Leandra’s unearthly sobbing.

“Then it’s settled.  Meet me at the city gates at daybreak tomorrow.”

Dog whines, and they turn their gazes on him rather than prolong the worst for each other.  The tall woman runs her nails under his chin. 

“Are you sure, Aveline?”  And, she only asks because now it’s imminent, real, and perhaps this isn’t the year for anything real.

“I am.”  She smiles at Dog and then at Leandra.  But the sweetness on her lips is gone again just as quickly, along with the bright green whorls of her shield as she strides from the house.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Pants, Leandra thinks, are a strange and wonderful delicacy in her old age.  She would pit them against any Antivan brandy or Orlesian pâté.  Still, she can’t help feeling conspicuous, downright _adventurous_ , crossing Hightown’s flagstones with the breeches clinging to her thighs and the small rucksack bouncing against her back.  Bodahn had been more than accommodating with the pack, and the provisions within it. . . as well as promising to give her a generous head-start before mentioning to her late-rising son that she was gone.  Assuming it would alarm him at all.  _Sod it_ , she thinks, and enjoys the way the unuttered curse rolls around in her mind.

Her quick feet bring her through a city she barely sees any more, past stalls that haven’t opened for business and other. . .merchandise. . .that only now staggers back home after a long night.  Kirkwall is blue in the mornings, pale and groggy and eternally chilled.  And Leandra avoids thinking of the hiding places and alleyways they knew as children, she and Gamlen.  She blinks at the stark traces of those secret nooks that refuse to look away from her.  How useful, how different, they became as she grew.

Aveline waits for her, sunrise lighting up the red crown of her head, long legs crossed casually as she leans against the massive archway connecting the city to the greater, wilder world outside.  The elder Hawke is a little breathless already from her brisk walk, but the thumping rhythm in her chest is the sort that signals the beginning, and not the flagging end, of her spirits.  She nods at the captain and, without a word, they begin the day’s journey.

  
Humidity tugs at the lank hair that escapes its binding at her nape and temples.   Aveline bids her rest after pulling her up and over too many boulders, unwilling to ignore the wheeze in Leandra’s chest any longer.

“How far do you want to go?” she asks, settling her thin brows low beneath the blade of her hand against the sun, scanning the path ahead.  But Leandra looks back at the trail behind them, allowing a bit of pride for her muscles and joints.  True, she’ll ache something terrible in the next few days.  But right now she doesn’t ache at all.

“I suppose we’ll know it when we get there, will we not?”

Aveline nods.  Neither of them smiles or offers much in the way of conversation outside of sharing some apples and a swish or two of water to wet the mouth.  And, after another hour or so, with the sea churning to white under the full heat and bluster of the day’s wind, they find what neither felt the necessity to say aloud.  In a circle of high stones, set in a flattened outcrop against the coast’s upthrust cliffs, Leandra pauses with the tall captain behind her.  The wind sucks at them, sending errant hair and sand across their faces.  She looks over her shoulder and finds the pale contours of Aveline’s cheeks a little flushed, the sparkle in her eyes a little clouded.  And that’s how she knows they’ve arrived.

What happens between when they step foot in the scant circle of earth, and when they finally depart less than half an hour later, is something Leandra and Aveline will never feel compelled to share with the others.  It involves so little of import to anyone else.  Not to the seething injustices of the larger world, not to the warriors who surround them in their daily lives, and not even, Leandra thinks with a chill, to those who would have come along if they’d been asked properly. 

She slips her hands beneath the straps of the pack and places it on a low stone.  From inside she plucks a piece of quartz and holds it between her trembling fingers.  Only five people in the world outside of herself might have recognized the thing for what it was, how it once adorned the tip of a sylvanwood staff.  Two are gone.  Two are embroiled in the myriad pains of this strange, new life.  And the last . . .is the woman who rose from the side of her dead husband to take Leandra’s hand when neither wanted to move another inch.  When the appearance of a dragon seemed less immediate than the extraordinary pain, the unabashed horror, of a heart that continues to pound while another, the one that seemed to complete each beat, lies cold.

Beside her, Aveline pulls open the ties of her own satchel and withdraws a small pin, the Ferelden crest so worn that the once-crisp etching is satiny with age.  She joins Leandra at the edge of the clearing, and they watch the sea with the mountain rising at their backs.  Kirkwall is a white-brown haze beyond the surf, its pale, craggy cliffs about as inviting as a steel trap.

“I’m not sure what I want to do,” Aveline confesses, and Leandra notes how the tips of her long fingers avoid the crest as she hefts the pin.  “Bury or throw?”

Leandra considers her own trinket.  Bethany loathed that staff.  She coveted her father’s so dearly that she had earned Garrett’s wrath on more than one occasion by snatching it while he was sleeping.  _That_ , Leandra smirks, is the real reason he sleeps with it.  And wouldn’t his friends like to know it?

She casts a glance at the hard-packed ground in the clearing, and back again to the sea with its forbidding, broken waves clutching at Kirkwall’s shoulders.

“We came all this way.  Would it be terrible to say neither?”  He voice feels tight, and smaller than it ought to be. Without realizing it, Leandra has begun to ache already.

“Not in the least.”  Aveline smiles, inclining her head, and doesn’t hide her tears or wipe them away. 

So, lacking any words to complete a ritual neither of them really designed, the two women point their feet toward lower ground.  The way is easier going down, and though they don’t exactly look forward to crossing Kirkwall’s monolithic threshold (Leandra wonders if it will ever actually _feel_ like home again) they find no bandits or Kossith blocking their path . . .and no snarling creatures with foam-flecked mouths.  The old woman in borrowed pants and the captain of Kirkwall’s guard descend the Wounded Coast, untouched except for the buffeting winds and the occasional, piercing cry of a gull overhead.





End file.
